First Nations Sovereignty now on the International agenda

The fact that I am now in London has created concern of international proportions. The uniting of descendants of former slaves with other First Nations throughout the Pacific and Canada is telling.

We are now negotiating a pathway to our liberation and the international acceptance of our pre-existing and continuing sovereignty and thereby resurrecting our ways of governance and disbanding the Westminster style of democratic governance, which is one of confrontational advocacy.

London Interview went to air on BBC World News in over 200 countries on 14 October 2016

Ghillar, Michael Anderson 15 October 2016 London

During our London-based International Consultative Preparatory Forum (ICPF) on Decolonisation and Reparations I was invited to an interview on BBC WORLD NEWS LIVE TV in order to open up the international debate on First Nations Sovereignty. The London broadcast reached 200 countries worldwide on 14 October 2016, during Black History month.

associated with genocide and mass murder, along with the almost total destruction of societal norms, economies and local governance through our own Laws and customs.

Hitler was said to be an absolute tyrant for promoting the dominance of the Aryan race against all other Peoples, but there was little difference in Australia. In 1901 the first Prime Minister of Australia, Edmund Barton MP, with the approval Professor Charles Pearson quoted at length:

The fear of Chinese immigration which the Australian democracy cherishes … is, in fact, the instinct of self-preservation, quickened by experience … We are guarding the last part of the world in which the higher races can live and increase freely, for the higher civilisation … The day will come … when the European observers will look around the globe girdled with a continuous zone of the yellow and black races. It is idle to say that if all this should come to pass our pride and place will not be humiliated. We are struggling among ourselves for supremacy in a world which we thought of as destined to belong to the Aryan race; and to the Christian faith; to the letters and arts and charms which we have inherited from the best of times.

[Pearson, Charles H. 1893, National life and character: a forecast, Macmillan, London.]

Sir Robert Menzies, a leader of the Liberal party and Howard's and Abbott's political idol, said on his 1938 return from Munich, having met senior members of the Third Reich hierarchy, words to the effect that he was in support of David Lloyd George MP in England, who said he was not afraid of Hitler; he admired him. This was one of the reasons why Menzies found him [Hitler] intriguing. Lloyd George had once said that Hitler was a ‘great leader’ and he shared the view that Menzies himself had formed on his visit to Germany in 1938. Menzies went further when he proposed adopting Hitler’s policies.

[Williamson, K. 1984, The Last Bastion, Lansdowne, Sydney, p. 86.]

Abbott is also aware that his idol, Menzies, also promoted the idea of accepting some of the Third Reich’s policies into the Australian polity. I now express concern about the role and function of Tony Abbott's new position as a director to a London-based organisation promoting Western values and Abbott’s promotion of xenophobia amongst countries with western values. This action by Tony Abbott is a return to the 1930s Third Reich ideologies.

I also have serious concerns about Warren Mundine's continued blind support for Tony Abbott when Mundine recently said to the Australian media, during a Fox News diplomatic news commentary, that Tony Abbott is the most supportive and strongest advocate for First Nations Peoples in Australia. Clearly, Warren Mundine needs a lesson in the English language so as to understand word definitions and the reality behind them. Additionally, Mundine's lack of historical knowledge, association brings about his ineffective advocacy, because he fails to understand what has really happened in this country and which continues to this day.

The Courts in this country call us subjects of the monarchy. Being a subject does not give us citizenship. We are Peoples whose lands are now occupied by a foreign power and they have created a regime of subjugation, through protectionism of an alien race.

Image: Some of the 'leading' Aboriginal enemies of First Nations peoples. These people use their high public profile to suppress our rights to maintain and repatriate our inherited culture and our right to pursue self-determination. They are assisting the government in their ongoing genocidal practices of breeding out our Aboriginality in the pursuit of assimilation.

Warren Mundine and his cohorts, like Pearson and Langton, need lessons in history and political manoeuvring. If they understood this, then they may be able to accept that Australia is very clever at disguise and subterfuge. The Australian Government is clever at giving a false impression that the Commonwealth is looking after the interests and welfare of First Nations Peoples by their campaign of 'Closing the Gap', but the real hidden active agenda is assimilation.

The fact that Tony Abbott took up the director position in London raises the red flag for all First Nations Peoples of Australia. In this regard, I return to the Samuel Griffith Society of Constitutional lawyers’ advice to John Howard when his government was preparing the Ten Point Plan amendments to the Native Title Act in 1998. Dr Stephen Davis advised:

The issue of domestic sovereignty is set to dominate future international discussions of indigenous rights, and decisions made by the United Nations, together with precedents in other countries, could potentially change the map of this country. Land rights and native title in Australia are examples of a very dynamic debate which is open-ended, and which can be simply linked to international conventions and trends to develop a credible basis for a range of outcomes with far reaching and irreversible consequences.

Australians tend to take their sovereignty for granted. That sovereignty is now being contested. We must become more aware of the issues, the players and be prepared to defend our sovereignty if we are to maintain it.

Clearly, Tony Abbott has heeded this warning and understands the true implications of First Nations’ assertion of sovereignty. He has now accepted the challenge to fight First Nations sovereign ambitions through an international campaign of like-minded westerners.

In addition to this extreme concern, there is another factor that Tony Abbott has taken on as a personal campaign and that is his understanding of other advice given by Dr Davis which warned John Howard that:

A case is likely to be constructed by Aboriginal people, on the basis of sovereignty, to test the Crown ownership of minerals. If a case for sovereignty is successful, then there may be latitude for a claim for compensation in respect of at least the royal minerals (Gold and Silver), or royalty payable to indigenous groups for royal mineral extracted, both past and future. If Crown ownership of minerals is affirmed in the amendments [to the Native Title Act 1993] then there may well be a case for compensation mounted by indigenous groups.

The States are wary of this possibility and have subsequently encouraged the Federal Government to avoid any affirmation of crown ownership.

This concern stems from the 1992 Mabo (No. 2) High Court judgment where it was held that the Crown gained a radical title. The High Court goes on to hold that, in law, Australia did not gain beneficial radical title:

49. … It is not surprising that the fiction that land granted by the Crown had been beneficially owned by the Crown was translated to the colonies and that Crown grants should be seen as the foundation of the doctrine of tenure which is an essential principle of our land law. It is far too late in the day to contemplate an allodial or other system of land ownership. Land in Australia which has been granted by the Crown is held on a tenure of some kind and the titles acquired under the accepted land law cannot be disturbed.

51. By attributing to the Crown a radical title to all land within a territory over which the Crown has assumed sovereignty, the common law enabled the Crown, in exercise of its sovereign power, to grant an interest in land to be held of the Crown or to acquire land for the Crown's demesne. [added emphasis]

The question all First Nations Peoples must asked here is: What in the world are they talking about, particularly when we read what the High Court said about acquiring land? So the question we must have clarified is: If the Crown assumed it held radical title and the power to create Land Grants, who is the world would they be acquiring land from if there were no other owners?

It is my argument that this question is the reason why lawyers support Indigenous Land Use Agreements (ILUAs) because they can only make past land laws legal once our people are asked to surrender all claims now and in the future to their sovereign inheritance to their lands. This action by way of ILUAs I argue is their way of formally acquiring land from our Peoples for nothing through an immoral act by lies and deceit.

The 1992 Mabo (No. 2) High Court judgment continues at paragraph 51:

51. …The notion of radical title enabled the Crown to become Paramount Lord of all who hold a tenure granted by the Crown and to become absolute beneficial owner of unalienated land required for the Crown's purposes. But it is not a corollary of the Crown's acquisition of a radical title to land in an occupied territory that the Crown acquired absolute beneficial ownership of that land to the exclusion of the indigenous inhabitants. If the land were desert and uninhabited, truly a terra nullius, the Crown would take an absolute beneficial title (an allodial title) to the land for the reason given by Stephen C.J. in Attorney-General v. Brown (95) See pp 13-14 above; (1847) 1 Legge, at pp 317-318: (link) there would be no other proprietor. But if the land were occupied by the indigenous inhabitants and their rights and interests in the land are recognized by the common law, the radical title which is acquired with the acquisition of sovereignty cannot itself be taken to confer an absolute beneficial title to the occupied land. [added emphasis]

. . . . . . .

I call upon our people to get as many dictionaries as possible and learn the full meaning of the terms used above. By gaining a full understanding of what has just been quoted from the 1992 Mabo (No. 2) High Court judgment you will understand the advice given by the Samuel Griffith Society of lawyers to the invaders as quoted here. Both John Howard and Tony Abbott are very mindful of these facts and understand the political and legal gravity of the assertion of Aboriginal Sovereignty by the individual First Nations.

The surviving First Nations people across the continent that were not shot or starved out have been subject to a 'Cold War of Attrition' to this very day.

Image: Battye Library, Western Australia

As First Nations Peoples we are entering into a deeper aspect of the ‘Cold War of Attrition'. The governments of Australia know that the Mabo (No. 2) High Court decision opened the floodgates of land tenure and sovereignty, which is why the media conducted a campaign of fear by informing the public that all the lands were now subject to Aboriginal (First Nations) claim. We can now understand why the Keating Government grabbed all those so-called leaders, whom the government knew had something illegal and immoral hanging over them. This way, the government coerced them, by inference that they could be exposed for those wrong doings, if they failed to comply with the Federal Government’s ambitions to shut down Aboriginal (First Nations) rights under Australian Common Law.

The fact that I am now in London has created concern of international proportions. The uniting of descendants of former slaves with other First Nations throughout the Pacific and Canada is telling. We are now negotiating a pathway to our liberation and the international acceptance of our pre-existing and continuing sovereignty and thereby resurrecting our ways of governance and disbanding the Westminster style of democratic governance, which is one of confrontational advocacy, while our way is one of ensuring the common well-being of all those we are responsible for, and does not include confrontational advocacy but rather respect for our leaders and consensus decision-making which is for the collective, not the individual. Currently, the system of governance is promoting the need for a middle class and a privileged section of First Nations Peoples, which is in complete opposition to the collective nature of our societal norms.